During a chance for governors to ask questions of President Clinton in 1999, Angus King raised his hand and said, as he tells it, “Mr. President, it’s these special education expenses that are driving our budgets. It would be better if, instead of starting new programs, you funded the programs that were already mandated by Washington.” One level of government shortchanging the next level down is nothing new, but in a way they had not expected, local officials know exactly how the governor felt back then as a result of his proposed budget currently before the Legislature.

In it, for the first time in memory, the state will not be picking up the entire special education bill for wards of the state but only 80 percent of it, leaving $6 million to municipalities. Combined with the tiny increase in General Purpose Aid to Education and 25 to 30 percent rate of increase in the ward special-education costs, the proposed change represents a serious local problem, especially for service centers.

Back in the early 1980s, when funding for state wards was overhauled both out of humanitarian necessity and to meet the then-new federal special-education laws, the state accepted the entire cost of the program so that these children, who already had gone through so much, could at least remain in a single place, with even the smallest communities able to afford the proper services for them because the state picked up the tab. In practice, however, state agencies saw the advantage of moving these children to service centers, which had the medical facilities, counseling, housing, etc., that small towns did not have. As a result, service centers have a disproportionate number of state wards and now could have a disproportionate level of state cost.

The state clearly has a responsibility to provide adequate and appropriate resources to these students, but it is hard not to recall Gov. King’s comment to President Clinton and consider that if the federal government funded special education at the rate it promised, Maine would not now have this problem. But the feds don’t so Maine does, and passing more of these costs onto local taxpayers is every bit the abdication of responsibility that Washington has practiced for 25 years. Local governments already carry more of the burden for special education than was intended and they have nowhere else to pass it.